Gay Atlanta Nightlife

Atlanta has a thriving nightlife, and you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to participate in it.

The Heretic is one of Atlanta’s well-known gay clubs. Three-Legged Cowboy country dancing night takes place every Thursday with no cover charge. Learn how to line dance or two-step and dance the night away. There is also typically no cover on Wednesdays, and the DJs play more dance music. Check out the schedule for special events, including drag shows.

Blake’s on the Park has been an Atlanta staple since 1988. There’s never a cover charge and “always a groove.”

For a more relaxed night, head to Mary’s, which almost never has a cover, unless there’s a special event.

LGBT-Plus Arts Groups

Atlanta has many LGBT-plus arts groups that you can support or get involved in.

Members of the Atlanta Freedom Bands can often be seen at various events around town. You can audition to join the Color Guard, Concert Band, Marching Band, or MetroGnomes stage band. Or you can attend performances; admission often starts at $15 for single shows.

The OutFront Theater Company showcases stories of the LGBT-plus experience and community. The company is frequently looking for actors for its shows. (They even get paid!) Tickets start at $15.

Singers can audition for the Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus and the Atlanta Women’s Chorus every summer; there is a membership fee to join. The choirs’ performances take place throughout Atlanta, and season tickets begin at $100.

The Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Chorus is another choral group for which members of the community can audition. There is a fee to join. More information on upcoming concerts is available on its website.

Queer-Friendly Sports

Finally, for those of you who are sports-inclined, it’s easy to join leagues. Some have higher membership fees than others, but all are inclusive and friendly. For sports leagues not mentioned below, check out the Georgia Voice listings page.

The Hotlanta Squares is a fun way to brush up on your square dancing. If you’ve never danced before, you can join an open house that typically takes place once or twice a year, or you can just join right in!

GO Kickball has a Pride League, which is always looking for new players. Check out the website for more information.

If you want to play flag football, the National Flag Football League of Atlanta is the local chapter of the National Gay Flag Football League. It’s easy to join on its website.

Rugby has become popular, and the Atlanta Bucks Rugby team is there to help you learn more about the sport.

Not competitive? Join the Front Runners Club for walkers and runners.

For the swimmers out there, Atlanta even has a gay Aquatics Club for swimming, water polo, and triathlon teams.

Atlanta Team Tennis Association offers open play every Saturday.

Queer-Focused Events

There’s always a queer-focused event going on in the city.

The Atlanta Pride Committee, which used to only be responsible for the annual Pride festival in Piedmont Park, now has a running calendar of events throughout the year.

The best part? Many of them are free. Atlanta Black Pride Festival takes place every year at the end of the August and features a festival in Piedmont Park, as well.

LGBT-Plus Organizations

Looking to fill your time with some volunteering? Atlanta has tons of LGBT-plus organizations that you can contribute to. For example, the Rush Center is home to five major organizations — Georgia Equality, The Health Initiative, Atlanta Pride, Pro-Georgia, and SOJOURN — that work for LGBT-plus equality. There are also many other organizations working on LGBT-plus issues, including Lost-n-Found Youth, Real Youth Atlanta, and AID Atlanta. Georgia Voice lists many more organizations, as well.

There is so much going on in the Atlanta gay community that there’s really no excuse not to get involved. Just get out and meet people!

Part I

Part II

Tax season is upon us. For LGBT couples, this may be only the first or second year you can file taxes together. LGBT families may have different needs than straight couples, and transgender taxpayers may need guidance on how to file appropriately. These are the top considerations for LGBT couples and their families:

Only file your taxes jointly if you’re legally married to your partner.

Wedding bells are ringing after the Supreme Court ruled in June 2015 that same-sex couples have the legal right to marriage across the U.S. Even so, some LGBT couples choose not to become legally married for a variety of reasons. If you and your partner haven’t submitted a marriage license, then you won’t be able to file your taxes jointly.

File your taxes with the name on your social security card.

People changing their names must file their taxes with the name on their social security card. Maybe you’ve begun going by a different name at work, and even have credit cards in your preferred name.

When changing your name, the first thing you should do after receiving the court order is to take it to the Social Security Office. This also affects people changing a name after marriage. Make sure to give yourself enough time to get a new social security card after changing your name, since it can take up to 14 days.

Unmarried homeowners may benefit by deducting mortgage interest.

The Ninth Circuit ruled that unmarried co-owners of a home can deduct mortgage interest on up to $2.2 million of acquisition debt. Married couples, meanwhile, are limited to $1.1 million. You may be able to receive a refund from previous years, as well.

Couples adopting children may benefit from marrying first.

Are you and your partner thinking about adoption? Whether you do it together or as a second-parent adoption, you may want to consider marrying in the year prior to adoption. Let’s say, for example, Jane wants to adopt Jill’s child. Any expense that Jane incurs prior to marriage isn’t included in the qualified adoption expenses.

Meanwhile, Jim and Frank haven’t married, but they want to adopt a child together. Their joint income is more than $195,000 and the maximum allowance is $194,580. For both of these couples, it may be more beneficial to marry prior to the adoption.

Most couples can file their taxes independently through TurboTax or H&R Block, but CPA Rosalind W. Sutch, who focuses on LGBT tax and financial planning issues at Drucker and Scaccetti in Philadelphia, recommends that some couples seek advice from a qualified tax professional familiar with LGBT issues.

Unmarried couples who live together and share ownership of property should talk to a tax professional, especially if they have children.

Married couples who did estate planning before national marriage equality passed in 2015 should also review their documents with a professional to see what, if anything, you need to change.

Sutch explains that she has recently seen a number of situations and mistakes that LGBT couples should be aware of when filing taxes. In one case, unmarried partners with teenage children used two different tax preparers, and they lost tax credits because the preparers didn’t communicate. In this case and others, it’s wise to reach out to a tax professional.

Another difference in taxes for same-sex couples after the Marriage Equality Law:

Jill makes $80,000, and Jane makes $35,000. When they filed separately before their marriage was recognized, Jill paid $13,219 in taxes and Jane paid $3,244. Between the two of them, they paid a total of $16,463 in taxes. This year, they can file jointly as a married couple. With the same income this year, they pay $15,188. That saves them $1,275 that they can spend on a trip to the Bahamas!

I always knew I wanted to have kids, and when I met my partner, it was clear to me that we would one day become parents. While that day hasn’t arrived yet, we know that we have a few options when ready to try, and like other gay couples, our path to parenthood as two women is very different from that of our straight friends who are not experiencing infertility.

The costs of becoming parents is something that I’m sure most people never think about, and yet we will likely spend thousands of dollars to grow our family.

How much we need to save depends on what our insurance will cover and which route to parenthood works the best for us. Before we even decide on which action to take, we are already lucky: we have two uteri to choose from. We decided that I will be the one carrying, but if Emet really wants, she has that option, too.

We will also need to decide if we want a sperm donor who is anonymous, open, or known. An anonymous donor means our child will never have the ability to reach out to him, even after our child turns 18. An open donor is willing to meet our child after they turn 18. Anyone can go to Cryobank.com and look at the options there.

We already know that a Jewish donor is important, and friends of ours want a donor who is the same ethnicity as the non-biological parent. But there are still a lot of other decisions to make:

Do we want a donor from a sperm bank who has many other children out there? Do we want our child to know those half-siblings? These are questions we have to think about. We know couples who have playdates with their kids’ half-siblings and share information about health and personality. We also know couples who have decided to never learn the identity of the other children whom their donor conceived. It’s a deeply personal decision.

Another option is a known donor – a friend who is willing to be known to the child, either as a co-parent or an “uncle.” Legal issues and our own desire to be seen as the child’s primary parents make known donor relationships tricky for us, but may be a great option for other lesbian couples. We know we do not want a co-parent relationship, although some couples would love the extra support.

If one of us is to become pregnant, we have two options: intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

IUI is the cheapest option. Without fertility problems, this procedure can be done at home without any medical intervention. If it doesn’t work at home, any reproductive endocrinologist will be able to assist, though that would increase the cost, including blood work, medications, and office visit charges. IUI success rates are five to 25 percent each month, depending on age and fertility issues, but that’s not so different from natural conception.

If IUI doesn’t work, we have the option of IVF, which is a process by which eggs are retrieved from the ovary, fertilized, allowed to grow for three or five days outside of the womb, and then returned to the uterus with the hope that the embryo will attach to the uterine wall. Some lesbian couples might also want to do reciprocal IVF, through which one partner carries an embryo using her partner’s egg. For someone facing infertility issues, IVF can absolutely increase the odds of pregnancy. Depending on age, clinic, and fertility issues, a woman’s chance of conceiving each month with IVF varies from 13 to 75 percent.

Some lesbian couples may choose to adopt rather than try to get pregnant. In my county, there are many children to adopt at no cost because of their age or special needs. It’s much more costly to adopt a newborn. One provider I saw based their fees on a sliding scale, but the least expensive option was still over $13,000.

International adoptions aren’t any better, and some agencies charge upwards of $30,000, depending on where the child lives.

Gay couples have the option of surrogacy, whereby a woman will carry a child for the couple, who will pay all medical and legal fees. The surrogate will not have any relationship with the child, unless previously agreed upon. This is by far the most expensive option for growing a family, but the most desired option for some couples.

Whether or not to have a child is a big decision for every prospective parent, but I never imagined how much it would cost or how much we would need to save. Insurance rarely covers infertility treatment, let alone when elective conception procedures, so many of the costs will likely be out-of-pocket.

The first time I considered going to the mikveh was before my wedding. While this was a completely typical time to think about going to the mikveh, I was marrying a woman, not a man, and I identify as queer. I didn’t know if going to a mikveh would be right for me, or whether I would even be allowed to use it.

My partner and I studied at Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. While neither of us grew up incredibly religious, we decided separately that having a traditional Jewish home was important to us both. After we got engaged, we knew it would be useful to meet with a kallah (bride) teacher who could tell us about using the mikveh and the niddah(family purity laws) tradition that we had never heard about until coming to Israel. We were lucky to meet with a kallah teacher who had taught a religious lesbian couple before us, and we even had a chance to talk with the couple to discuss their experience with niddah and the mikveh, as a way to determine how it works for a non-heterosexual couple, and what might work for us.

Eight months later, we were living in Denver and about to get married. We decided to separate for the seven days prior to the wedding, during which point we each went to the mikveh. There was no open mikveh in Denver, like Mayyim Hayyim that is not affiliated with any one religious movement, allowing women and men of any age to dip in the waters for reasons that the mikveh has not been used traditionally, such as surviving cancer or following a gender transition. I knew I would have to go to the only mikveh in my area or to the Aish mikveh in south Denver. I was involved with Aish in Israel, a movement that seeks to bring Jews to a more traditional Judaism, and had my own perceptions of the community’s perspective on queer people. While I don’t have QUEER written on my forehead, I was concerned that someone may ask something about my fiancé, or somehow know automatically that I didn’t belong there.

I thought the mikveh was a space solely for Orthodox Jews, that it was a place where I would need to hide my authentic self, just as I had when going to Shabbat dinners all over Israel. I thought maybe I would be cast out, or treated poorly just because I didn’t fit into the community where a mikvah existed. At the same time, I was determined to access this space, and I wanted to reclaim it as a place where I could feel comfortable.

The first time I went, the mikveh was in deplorable condition–with cracked flooring and dim lighting–nothing like the beautiful spas I had heard of. While the attendant didn’t ask about my wedding or fiancé, I knew I was hiding, and I would need to lie if she did. Luckily, I left without any incident, and surprisingly, I felt that the mikveh was more about the woman as an individual, rather than as a wife or a mother. I couldn’t bring myself to return, and ironically, this mikveh closed only a few months later.

When I was seeking some special prayers a few months later, I went to the Aish mikveh, despite my own doubts. This mikveh was immaculate, just like the ones I had heard about. The bathroom was gorgeously tiled, and the mikveh felt clean and inviting. But as before, I was concerned that someone would ask about my partner, or know that I didn’t belong in this community. I dunked and left quickly yet again.

We recently moved to Atlanta, and I wanted to go for special prayers once more. My partner works at Bet Haverim, a gay and lesbian founded synagogue, and I’m involved with SOJOURN, an organization that supports the Jewish and queer communities. I mentioned to a friend about my experience at the mikveh, and she told me that a new community mikveh called MaCOM was opening in the city. We were invited to speak at a queer women’s house meeting about the mikveh, which included the director of MaCOM; I felt completely comfortable knowing that I was welcomed and encouraged to use this mikveh.

Because MaCOM just opened, I have only gone once, but I intend to go in the future as much as I can. Dipping makes me feel closer to God and gives me a sense of connection to Jewish women in the past, present, and future. Now I don’t have to appear to fit in any box, and I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not. When I dunk, I approach my prayers as my full self, and it makes all the difference.

Every day, I’m thankful my partner and I are on the same page with finances. We have similar goals and spending habits, and we share credit cards and bank accounts. I recently asked a friend about her relationship with her wife.

I was surprised that they each only had a general idea of the amount of student debt the other had before marriage, and that they didn’t combine their finances.

In fact, my partner and I are among a minority of people who had a discussion on money issues before marriage. According to a Wells Fargo study, only 28 percent of same-sex couples discussed their personal feelings and views about money before getting married, compared to 19 percent among heterosexual couples.

Here’s the kicker. 15 percent of them never speak about finances, before or after marriage, according to a report by TransUnion, 2013. But as I continued my research and talked to my friends, I found these surveys didn’t paint a whole picture.

Were married millennials in a same-sex couple amy different from those in a heterosexual couple?

I asked one lesbian couple and one heterosexual couple about their financial strategy. Sarah and her wife Vivian live in Los Angeles, and Allison and her husband Colin live in Minneapolis.

Both of my friends spoke about finances in some way before getting married. Sarah and Vivian say they talk about money mostly in relation to student debt. Allison says that speaking about finances so openly with her husband was very weird to her, since her own family almost never spoke about money. But it was important both to her and to Colin that they were on the same page financially.

Allison has become accustomed to planning a budget with someone, and feels that it’s been great having someone to be accountable to. “It’s gotten less weird over time,” she says.

Emet and I came to our relationship speaking about our spending and savings habit at the beginning. We were pleased to find that we agreed on most things. While none of the couples agree 100 percent of the time, we all seem to be on the same page most of the time.

All of us have some income discrepancies between partners.

Sarah makes more than Vivian, Emet makes more than me, and Allison makes more than Colin. But surprisingly, it’s not an issue for any one of us.

Sarah says that neither her job nor her wife’s job is secure. But because she makes more at the moment, she pays the bills now, knowing that Vivian will support them when she is out of work. Allison doesn’t think that the difference in income is a big deal in their relationship, but she thinks that Colin wishes he made more money in general.

I’m starting a freelance writing business, while Emet supports us with her full-time salary. When we talk about money, we both wish we made more. But we absolutely live within our means, and every penny I earn goes straight into our savings account.

I feel good helping us to build our savings, even if it isn’t as much as I would like. I have been freelancing for only a few months, so I know that I will continue earning more as time goes on.

As my friends and I talked, I realized that there may not be much difference in the way my partner and I communicate, in spite of our circumstances or sexual orientation.

The more I thought about those surveys, the more I felt that millennials were not the subject. We are more open than previous generations, not only in dating and household responsibilities, for example, but money matters, too! We’re more anxious about debt, jobs, and retirement, so it only makes the most sense that we talk more openly about money in our relationships.

Perhaps the biggest problem is deciding who wants to make dinner tonight when neither one of us wants to cook!